Small Ala. town confronts kidnapping

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. - Many things hold little Southern towns together. There is a common love of the region, the peace that comes with a rural life and, often, prayer.

In this town of 2,300 in the heart of peanut country, people drew on all of those as they endured what by Thursday night had stretched into an unimaginable situation.

A relative newcomer to town - a man who had fought in Vietnam and appeared to harbor a deep distrust of government and a grudge against every neighbor - shot and killed a bus driver, grabbed a 5-year-old boy named Ethan and then disappeared with the boy into a well-equipped bunker he had spent several months digging in his yard.

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By Thursday night, no end was in sight. The FBI stayed in contact with Dykes by day and let him sleep at night, said Police Chief James Arrington of Pinckard, a nearby city.

"They're taking time and trying to wear him out," he said. "He may do harm if they try to rush him. We don't know how much ammunition or bombs he has."

Tim Byrd, chief investigator with the Dale County Sheriff's Office, told the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog that Dykes was a Vietnam veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress who "did not trust the government."

Dykes, neighbors said, has been known to stay in his bunker for up to eight days.

No one is sure exactly why he took the boy.

"He don't care too much for the government," Arrington said. "That's all we know."

The boy, whom his mother calls "love bug," is reportedly doing well in the bunker, an Alabama state senator, Harri Anne Smith, said in a TV interview early Thursday. She and Alabama state Rep. Steve Clouse have met with Ethan's mother, and said food and medication her son needed for autism was delivered to the bunker through a 60-foot plastic pipe.

Still, Clouse said, the family is "just holding on by a thread."

The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, encountered Dykes as he drove children home from school Tuesday. The bus stopped and Dykes jumped on, according to police reports, and then he demanded two boys.

Poland held Dykes at the front of the bus while children escaped out the back. He was hit with as many as four bullets from a 9 mm pistol. The well-liked driver was quickly called a hero by residents.

Meanwhile, the community here is doing what small communities do. It did not take long for churchgoers to start cooking, joining the Salvation Army and the Red Cross in efforts to feed more than 50 weary FBI negotiators and law enforcement officers.

"Everybody wants to help, everybody is talking about the boy," said Lisa Boatwright, a secretary at a nearby church. "But there's only one thing we can do: pray this ends safely."